You can try avoiding Metallica, but when the biggest band in the world releases album, it is not possible for you not to hear about it. Even the worst and the most unimportant media have a piece on it.
Pinnacle of fame with Black album, and midlife crisis with albums at the end of the 90s, then documentary about hitting a rock bottom, then the neurotic St.Anger, then huge effort to sound like Metallica again on Death Magnetic. Lulu was an experiment that no one alive understands, while 3D combination of concerts and financial breakdown finally pushed the band aside to the abyss. They needed to survive all of this to create something like Hardwired…To Self-Destruct.
How to miss when a big machine like Metallica keeps a secret and then release the album one day out of the blue? How to miss when the album gave an instant pulse and mouth-to-mouth breathing to a dead music business and the physical release sales? How? How? How?
Fame, money, lack of enthusiasm… Who knows what you would get tired of If you were flying the music sky for 35 years. Would you overdose, die from a virus or send everyone to hell?
Being constantly on a top and managing to survive deserves admiration. Hetfield and Ulrich should be everyone’s idols. Maybe I did not forgive them Load and Reload, but I love Ain’t My Bitch, Bleeding Me and Outlaw Thorn. Eight years ago, I did not notice the buzz about the loud noise of Death Magnetic, since I loved the riffs on All Nightmare Long and the tempo of My Apocalypse.
Today, Metallica sounds like Metallica. Does that mean we have Ride The Lightning 2? Absolutely not. We have Metallica who made Master of Puppets, Black and Reload.
Atlas, Rise! sounds thrilling, and Moth Into Flame is good, but not great. Here we come to the end of the songs that prepared us for their return. The rest is there to accomplish the twelve-song album, although it would have been If they included only 8 or 9. Why? Because Confusion is a filler. Because we will remember only metal spot from the boring ManUNkind. Because Here Comes Revenge sounds unfinished. Because Amy and Savage is not a metal victory. Because Murder One should have been an ultra-hasty and ultra-aggressive farewell to Lemmy.
But then it comes something that forces me to nurture my love for Metallica. Spit Out The Bone is a bomb.
Remove your heart, it’s only good for bleeding
Bleeding through your fragile skin
And remove your thought
Cause it’s only for deceiving
Deceiving thoughts destroy within
I am not sure why Lords Of Summer did not end up on standard edition, but that is another reason why you buy limited edition. I think I will forever miss their metal anger and evil. Still, I am glad that, a least, we did not experience another Unforgiven IV.
